The Ivy Film Festival presents an advanced screening of The Kings of Summer tonight at 8 p.m. This “unforgettable coming-of-age comedy” is a 2013 Sundance Selection, and made a ton of Top-Ten-Must-See Sundance film lists. The film’s official release date is May 31, 2013. It’s projected to be a huge summer hit.

The Kings of Summer is a comedic tale of three teenage boys who try to make a home for themselves in the woods, Jean Craighead George-style. The film features comedy stars Nick Offerman from Parks and Recreation, Alison Brie from Community, and Megan Mullalley from Will and Grace and the equally as important “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” commercials. Some of you may also remember Moises Arias, the wily Rico from Hannah Montana, and if you don’t, here’s a video of him doing the “Stanky Leg.”  He plays one of the boys in this film, alongside Gabriel Basso and Nick Robinson.

For those of you who saw The Way, Way Back earlier this week (or heard every person in attendance raving afterwards), you should trust the IFF’s judgment when they say that this movie is going to kill it. Doors open at 7:45 p.m. See ya there!

The trailer isn’t even out yet.

The Ivy Film Festival’s advanced screenings for 2013 kick off tonight with a free showing of The Way Way Back at the Avon tonight at 7 p.m. The film is the directorial debut of Jim Rash and Nat Faxon, the Oscar-award winning screenwriters of The Descendants, and is due for official release July 5. Fox Searchlight bought distribution for a cool $10 million, which is the most spent on a Sundance film since the studio bought Little Miss Sunshine in 2006.

The movie reunites Sunshine alum Steve Carell and Toni Collette, and also stars Sam Rockwell, Maya Rudolph, and Amanda Peet. The plot follows teen Dunan (Liam James) as he deals with summer at his mom’s douchey boyfriend’s beach house. Unsurprisingly, Collette plays the struggling single mom in the relationship with a man who is both cheating on her and hazing her son; very surprisingly, it is Carrell portraying said bad-guy. Sam Rockwell stars as the cool waterpark owner who gives Duncan a secret job and helps with the coming-of-age side of this dysfunctional family comedy. As far as Sundance movies go, this is as summer blockbuster-y as you can get. Plus, this is a good reason to go to the Avon for the first time  — we love free things!

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While the Avon continues to squeeze the life out of Quartet, The Ivy Film festival will be showcasing yet another unreleased, buzz-worthy film this week. Girl Rising is the powerful story of nine different girls from nine different countries that fight for an education in the face of adversity. Faced with arranged marriages, child slavery, and other tragic injustices, the girls see education as a way to escape and change their oppressive living conditions. Wednesday night’s 6:30 screening will consist of a segment of the film focusing on one of the girls’ story.

Girl Rising is the project of 10×10, a social action campaign aiming to communicate the importance of educating girls in developing nations. It focuses its message around the feature film, which, helmed by Academy Award-nominated director Richard E. Robbins, promises to be well-executed and thought-provoking.

After the segment’s screening, Holly Gordon ’93 (executive producer of 10×10) will speak about the film and her work. She’ll surely share some enlightening thoughts, but if that’s not enough to entice you over to Metcalf Auditorium, watch the trailer below, complete with a Bon Iver cover and somber voice-overs. It’s not often that tears are shed at a sneak peak, but I’d bet on this one getting emotional.

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Helen Hunt. Where can she go wrong? Absolutely nowhere, especially when she’s naked. Enter: The Sessions, a film that, in addition to featuring Helen Hunt in her sexy cougar phase, also tells the story of a paralyzed journalist (John Hawkes) who enlists a sex therapist to guide him through his first sexual experience. The Ivy FIlm Festival, which generally brings a few movies to campus outside of the festival proper, is screening the film FOR FREE in the Granoff Center TONIGHT at 7 p.m. The film has garnered incredible buzz since Fox Searchlight purchased it for $6 million. More recently, the critical consensus is overwhelmingly positive (95% on Rotten Tomatoes) and it will surely grab an Oscar nod or two. This free screening promises to be a legitimate date option (if you throw down at Mama Kim’s first) that will be over with plenty of time for pre-Fish Co. boozing (call me old fashioned?). Remember: Granoff Center, 7 p.m tonight. If you fail to show, you better be prepared to hand in your Helen Hunt fan badge….

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If Ivy Film Festival is taking an aggressive approach in marketing their next screening, it’s because Ai Wei Wei has shown that brazen confrontation gets attention. Through provocative art and digital activism, he has come to be one of China’s most outspoken political dissidents. On Thursday, his loud voice and stubby middle finger will reach Brown’s campus. Ai Wei Wei: Never Sorry is an in-depth look at the public life of Ai Wei Wei and the state of modern China. Director, producer and co-editor Alison Klayman ’06 spent two years documenting his thoughts and exploits until he was incarcerated in 2011. Though it’s her first feature documentary, the Brown alumna is already garnering high praise for Never Sorry. The film won a U.S. Documentary Special Jury Prize for Spirit of Defiance at this year’s Sundance Festival. She’ll be there to answer questions after the screening and make us all feel self-conscious about our post-graduation plans. The movie starts at 7 p.m. in List 120, doors opening 30 minutes prior.

If you’ve checked your calendar recently, you’ve noticed we’re really down to the final stretch: after this weekend, it’s Spring Weekend, and then reading period starts. So yes, if there was any time to neither party nor study, this weekend would be that time. But rather than spend hours at a mall shopping for things you don’t really need, in honor of the Ivy Film Festival ending tonight, we suggest checking out the movies before you get too busy or it gets too warm outside.

With Flixster (Apple / Android / Blackberry / Windows), you can do pretty much anything even remotely related to movies on your phone: buy tickets, watch trailers, read Rotten Tomatoes reviews, and even manage your Netflix queue or stream movies from iTunes. Since Flixster bought the Movies app from a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon in ’08, the app has consistently been one of the top movie apps on all platforms, so there really isn’t any reason why you wouldn’t already have it. There’s also a solid selection of highly-rated movies in theaters right now: Hunger Games, 21 Jump Street, Titanic, The Lorax… If anything, it’ll just be an extra reminder that you “really should go to the Avon/Cable Car more often.”

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The Ivy Film Festival has done it again.  This year the group is bringing in an advanced screening of Oscar-award winning director Barry Levinson’s new film “The Bay.”  This screening is so exclusive they haven’t even released a trailer yet!  What can you expect from the first look at this new film by the director of “Rain Man” and “Good Morning Vietnam?” The limited information that exists about the movie thus far says that it’s a horror film told through a series of recordings on camera phones, 911 calls and other scraps of video. Two biologists come to a small seaside town and discover that their water is contaminated. The mayor refuses to inform the citizens and soon the town has descended into horror as mutant parasites take over people’s minds and bodies.  Sound creepy?  It should.  It’s from the crew and production team that brought you “Paranormal Activity.”

The Creative Coalition has assisted the Ivy Film Festival in getting Levinson as part of their Spotlight Initiative. The Creative Coalition is a nonprofit organization that aims to mobilize leaders of the entertainment community to address issues such as freedom of speech and arts in public education. The organization was founded in 1989 by a group including Alec Baldwin and Susan Sarandon. Barry Levinson is just one of the many celebrities the Creative Coalition has joined up with over the years.

The screening is tonight, April 12^th at 7pm at the Avon!

Is it free?  DUH!  Just show up to the Avon before 7pm.  Seats will go fast.  You can also get tickets in advance on the Main Green today.

Missed out on Laura Linney’s speech on Tuesday?  Well, it’s not too late to catch everything the Ivy Film Festival has left in store. Lena Dunham will be screening her new HBO show, Girls, on Saturday at 1 pm in Salomon. Tickets will be available on the Main Green today from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Producer George Hornig will be here for a screening of his new Sundance-selected documentary Atomic States of America on Saturday from 6-8pm in Granoff, and all the amazing finalist film screenings will be shown Thursday, Friday, and Saturday!

The 2012 Ivy Film Festival, a week-long celebration of film that brings together professional and student filmmakers and screenwriters, will run from April 9 — 15. IFF’s 2012 lineup will feature Q&A sessions with actress Laura Linney ’86 (“Truman Show,” “Love Actually”) and director Barry Levinson (“Rain Man,” “Good Morning Vietnam”) during the week and will culminate with a screening of HBO’s new hit series “Girls,” followed by a Q&A with the show’s writer, director and star Lena Dunham.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0HAcSmz_pg

Last year, IFF featured professionals such as screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network,” “The West Wing”) and actor James Franco (“127 Hours,” “Milk”) and screened student films from around the world.   [Read more →]

Tonight at 7 pm, the Ivy Film Festival will host an advance screening of Martha Marcy May Marlene at Granoff’s Martinos Auditorium. The film, starring Elizabeth Olsen (the younger sister of Mary-Kate & Ashley, credited as “Girl in Car” in How the West Was Fun), won the Best Director award at Sundance earlier this year. It also currently holds a 93% rating on RottenTomatoes. The screening will be followed by a Q&A from some of the film’s producers (who also held a filmmaker panel at the 2011 Ivy Film Festival) and co-star Brady Corbet. Check out the awesome trailer here. If you couldn’t get tickets these past two days on the Main Green, doors open to non-ticket holders at 6:30 pm. Do it.

In previous years, the Ivy Film Festival has brought Aaron Sorkin, James Franco, Jack Nicholson and Martin Scorsese to Brown. Davis Guggenheim ’86 presented his influential documentary on the American education system, Waiting For Superman, two years ago. Other advance screenings have included the likes of (500) Days of Summer (with a screenwriter Q&A) and Star Trek.

Last year’s festival saw the pre-release screening of an indie dramedy called Ceremony. Writer/director Max Winkler and star Michael Angarano (“that guy who dated Kristen Stewart”) appeared after the screening to answer questions. The film was released on-demand before its extremely brief theatrical release, and was largely ignored by the American viewing public before finally being tossed, like so many crappy indie dramedies, into the depths of the Netflix Watch Instantly database. Destined to be forgotten.

And that’s a shame. Because Ceremony was good. [Read more →]

For those of you who missed James Franco’s hotly anticipated appearance on campus last month as part of the Ivy Film Festival, Charlie Rose has now uploaded the video. You can watch the full interview here. At about 53 minutes, it can serve as the perfect break from whatever book your nose is buried in.

Photo credit: Emily Gilbert / Herald